UWI/Guardian Life 'Premium' Teaching Awards 2008

2008 marked the tenth anniversary of the groundbreaking collaboration between The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and Guardian Life of the Caribbean Limited.  This year we looked back to rediscover our achievements and chart the way forward.  To mark the occasion, we had a specially selected Feature Speaker, one of our very own, the renowned Prof. Bridget Brereton.  Prof. Brereton is the first local speaker to grace the UWI/Guardian Life series of events.  The theme was Ten Years On: Making SoTL Real.  While our focus was on honouring the 2008 winners, our retrospective included narratives from past awardees whose viewpoints are a rich resource that can only advance teaching and learning on campus.  This was directly in keeping with the 2007-2012 Strategic Plan which has teaching and learning as one of the pillars of the UWI.  The ceremony took place on Friday 26th September at 5.00 p.m. at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC), St. Augustine.

As a precursor to the teaching awards and in celebration of our milestone, the IDU is hosted a forum entitled Towards Teaching Excellence and Higher Learner Outcomes which specifically targeted sixth form schools in Trinidad and Tobago.  Teachers and students had the opportunity to hear from and interact with past UWI/Guardian Life ‘Premium’ Teaching Awardees.  The purpose of the forum was to inform students and teachers about the recognition of tertiary level teaching and learning excellence and the role of incoming UWI students in enhancing their university experience.  The forum ran from 2.00 to 4.00 p.m. on the same day as the awards.

Feature Speaker and Judge: Prof. Bridget Brereton

Topic: Ten Years On: Making SoTL Real

Bridget Brereton is Professor of History at UWI St. Augustine.  She is the author or editor of several books about the history of Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean, as well as many articles, papers, and chapters in books.  She has served as Deputy Principal and as Principal of the St. Augustine Campus.  She was the first woman to win the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence (for Teaching, Research and Administration).  She has served as President of the Association of Caribbean Historians, as Chair of the Board of NALIS, and as Chair of the Committee to review all aspects of the Trinity Cross and other National Symbols and Observances.  Professor Brereton is the first local Feature Speaker at the UWI/Guardian Life 'Premium' Teaching Awards programme.

Judges

Chief Judge, Dr. Dale Roy, Executive Director, Centre for Leadership in Learning (CLL), McMaster University, has been associated with this centre since 1979, first as an educational consultant and later as Director. The centre includes services in course construction, peer consulting, and learning technology. Resources for teaching are provided at the centre along with workshops, seminars and symposia. He teaches a credit course in university teaching for graduate students, and mini-courses on teaching and learning topics and also provides a comprehensive program for new faculty, which includes course design, course refinement, and course observation. Dale has several publications that deal with the issues of teaching and learning in a university setting. He currently provides guidance to those teachers seeking to develop their dossiers for tenure or promotion.

Ms. Helen Gale, Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching, Centre of Excellence in Learning and Teaching, University of Wolverhampton, is responsible for the development of the staff learning community, in terms of their intellectual understanding of learning and teaching issues and expertise in the delivery and dissemination of effective and efficient learning and teaching practice. In so doing she is concerned with such issues as peer observation and the PG Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Her responsiblity also extends to the monitoring and evaluation of Learning and Teaching projects (approximately 30 per year), the Assessment Projects (10), and the Embedding Projects (10). She is particularly interested in models of change in staff and educational development and in innovatory assessment. Over the last three years she has authored and/or co-authored the following publications:

"Changing Practice through Innovation and Research: Learning and Teaching Projects"
"Change and Development through Innovation and Research: Learning and Teaching Projects"
"Supporting Students through Innovation and Research: Learning and Teaching Projects"

Ms. Gale is also a member of the Editorial Committee of Educational Developments, the magazine of the Staff and Educational Devleopment Association (SEDA).

John K. McGeachie BDSc, PhD, DSc (W.Aust), FDSRCS (Eng), FRACDS, FICD, Professor in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia.  John has been teaching anatomy, neuroanatomy and histology to undergraduates and post-graduates for the last 40 years.  For the last 21 years John has been lecturer and examiner for the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons.  He wrote a detailed book of lectures, which was published in 1998, and the College honoured his outstanding service to postgraduate teaching by electing him a Fellow in the same year.  In 1992 he was awarded the prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award by the Vice-Chancellor and the UWA Guild of Undergraduate students.  John has been nominated many times for this award and received the award again in 2003 and 2005, and a national award, a Carrick Citation for outstanding teaching in 2007.  He was chosen as Preclinical Tutor of the Year by Medical students in 2005 and 2007.  John has published extensively (over 100 papers, 90% of which are in refereed journals) on both of his research fields.  He is involved in many senior advisory committees in the University and is reviewer for numerous research journals and research funding bodies.  In 2000 he was appointed as Head of the School of Dentistry and Director of the new ($38 million) Oral Health Centre of Western Australia, which opened in January 2002.  In 2006 he was awarded an Order of Australia for his contributions to teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.